Exercise 1

Trying to recreate the sense of movement in the painting for "The Poet" was both simple and frustrating. The painting by Egon Schiele seems very dark and gloomy as if the person is trapped in a dark place. The placement of the head and angles that his limbs are placed suggest that he is cramped possible trapped in a tight place. Trunk of a car or in a small cave?

The simple part of the painting is that it uses a lot of dark colors and in the painting and makes the observer use his or her imagination. Schiele makes the face, chin and hands very visible along with what looks to me his white pants. The way he uses the dark red in the background as if hes trying to make an outline of his body but not making it obvious. I feel like the more I look at "The Poet" the more I see in the position of certain reds in the painting.

The frustrating part of this exercise is only being able to use a square shape and having a limited number of the squares that I could use. I definitely found myself using an excess of 20 squares in my painting because I tried to be as detailed as possible. It took me awhile to pick and choose what would come off to have less squares. After a few minutes I decided to pay more attention to the shades around his body then the details of the body and face. I used a similar color of red that was seen in the painting trying to make an outline of the body. I also saw there was a hint of blue in the painting as well and I through two shapes of blue which made it stick out.

Tuesday when I am in class, since it is a work day I am going to try to realign all the red to somehow create a outline of the body. I think once I am able to create that outline, observers will have a clearer idea of the person in the painting is in cramped dark place. I will also try to have the blue in there as well just to have it pop out a little. My goal will be to spend less detail on what is obvious to the eye and more on the blackness and red of the painting. After all I am sure Schiele spent more time placing strokes of red and faint white then on the details of his face and hands.